Stealth

Review: The Plotless and the Ridiculous.

by Chris Carle

July 29, 2005

Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, XXX) has essentially made a career of filming beautiful people controlling slick machines. With Stealth, the high-octane director takes his road show to the sky and after experiencing the results, perhaps he should stay on the ground.

Three elite naval air officers have been groomed for years to be part of a tactical force designed to move in quickly and strike on terrorist targets. These pilots are the best the Navy has to offer, and they are every bit as cocky and brave as we've come to expect from protagonists like these.

Played by Jessica Biel (who somehow even makes a flight suit sexy), Jamie Foxx and Josh Lucas, they are dreamy across the board, and although each does what they can with the material, the script doesn't offer much. Although the film tries to diversify and offer each of us a pilot to relate to, all three have essentially the same personality: confident, wisecracking and extremely duty-oriented, except when it clashes with their superior moral fiber. The actors strain to distinguish themselves, but are constrained within extremely one-dimensional characters.

The fourth team member is not a human (as if any of the others are), but a computer-controlled aircraft who has the ability to learn. Didn't these people watch Terminator? It's bad enough to create technology that matches the human brain&#Array; why give it a headstart by teaching it how to learn as well?

Of course, the robot plane, named EDI (and pronounced "Eddie") is introduced to the squad right before a critical mission, and the headstrong commanding officer, played by Sam Shepard, presses it into action (gasp!) before it has been properly tested. While it performs well in the first mission, it already begins to display signs of thinking on its own. When a lightning storm hits it and fuses the gears, the plane goes rogue, and begins to pick its own targets, regardless of the collateral damage it might cause.

The film plays like a weird mash-up of Top Gun, 2001, Behind Enemy Lines and [insert standard action movie here], borrowing heavily from the likes of Terminator and Maximum Overdrive with the machine-gone-bad elements. The voice of EDI is almost a direct rip-off of the "Hello Dave" voice of HAL from 2001.

But the main problem with Stealth is not the premise; it's the fact that you care very little about anything that's happening onscreen. The characters are not fleshed out enough to sympathize with, and as indicated before, none of them are differentiated so you cannot even pick one out to cheer for. Josh Lucas' character has the most personality of the three, but that might just be because he has blue eyes.

The computer plane at one point develops and begins teaching itself and interacting with the Internet, and almost gains more of a personality than any of the human characters. It even does us the favor of downloading every single song online&#Array; although its taste in music does not reach further than the scope of bands signed to the soundtrack. In fact, one should immediately question the intelligence of a plane that only listens to Incubus.

Other things are also bothersome. There is the standard unkempt slacker/computer wiz who works on the air craft carrier (where's his uniform?) helping to program the computer. This, of course, leads to a lot of unrealistic and annoying tech discussions, where over-simplified displays are used to over-explain what's happening. In fact, unrealistic uses of tech abound, including one groaner of a sequence where the computer plane scans the retinas and fingerprints of a group of terrorists from tens of thousands of feet in the atmosphere. The mere fact that this happens is bad enough, but the graphical display is straight out of a videogame, which lends the sequence an Uwe Boll (House of the Dead quality.

The characters make bold and inappropriate decisions throughout the film, throwing military protocol out the window any time trouble arises. Yeah&#Array; these three have hearts of gold. They cannot be corrupted. They will always follow their instincts and do the right thing. We get it.

From a pure action standpoint, the film does deliver some thrills. There are at least three purely orgasmic explosion sequences, and for that, it's a good idea to see in the theater. The burning ring of fire in the air is resplendent and all of the aerial fight sequences are precise and very real looking, despite the futuristic style of the planes in the film.

There are a good deal of computer-generated effects throughout (anything in the air, basically, which is most of the film), and it's a testament to the effects houses that they were able to deliver a staggering number of shots.

If you can divorce yourself from the serious plot and realism flaws, it's possible that you could enjoy this film in the same way one might enjoy The Fast and the Furious. But this film lacks the heart and humor and of either of the Furious flicks, and ends up resembling its robot plane: fast, sleek, soulless and monotone. Many worse movies have come out this summer, but few have felt as hollow.